It has not just revolutionized the way we search on the Internet, but also made education more fun and relevant in today’s technology-dependent world. With Google Apps, teachers and students can set up their own account and use Gmail, Google’s instant messenger GTalk to chat with teachers and fellow students in real time, synchronize their calendars so that they’re able to keep up with educational events, lectures, tests and discussions, and use videos for real-time lessons or conference study sessions when they’re not able to get together in one room.
If teachers are apprehensive about providing students with their own email and chat ids, the administrator has the option of turning these off, as well as any other applications that they feel are not suitable. One particularly useful aspect of Google Apps is the document sharer Google Docs which lets you share documents. This is great for working on shared projects where each student has edit and/or read options depending on their status in the group.
Another good tool is Google Sites that allows you to create your own class site where you can upload all the latest information and news that can be read and accessed by students from within the application. Google Sites is also a great tool for developing your own wikis, mini knowledge databases that are filled with information and data relevant to your learning and education.
Google Apps is a great way to stay in touch even if your students are scattered over the country or across the world, as in a distance education class. They help keep track of assignments, lectures and discussions and encourage collaboration between students and teachers.
The best part of schools and other educational institutions using Google Apps is that there are new and innovative uses being thought of for this technology. Students are getting more and more creative and utilizing this tool to enhance the way they and their friends learn and develop on a personal level and as a group. And so we see how technology becomes a great asset in the hands of the right people who know how to harness its power and derive the maximum benefits from it.
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This article is written by Kat Sanders, who regularly blogs on the topic of top online engineering degree at her blog The Engineering A Better World Blog. She welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: katsanders25@gmail.com.
Using technology in the classroom is one of the best and easiest ways to engage students who have grown up in the information age. Most students in public schools these days have grown up with the internet and are far more technologically savvy than most of their teachers; it’s no wonder that infusing lessons with technology ultimately resonate more strongly than lessons using only textbooks and written assignments. What follows is a brief list of ways to enhance teaching and learning by using technology in the classroom.
Video Resources
With the popularity of YouTube, there are thousands upon thousands of video resources available for free that can enhance the educational experiences of students in classrooms. Take the time to locate the proper resources ahead of time and look for other sites that stream educational programming for students’ use. Allowing them to stream video in the context of a computer lab may resonate more deeply than simply watching in the classroom.
Get Students Connected
Another tool that can be used in collaboration with other teachers in your district is to use email or school websites to help connect students with one another. Perhaps you have a lesson that another teacher uses; have their students contact your students and they can create collaborative projects using the web or simply exchange ideas related to the unit of study. There are many way and applications for using internet communication in lessons.
Create Presentations
Students love the ability to show off their skills, whether it’s making a short film, slideshow, or Power Point. Allow them to find images, information, and let them create presentations to give in front of the class. Be sure to have them cite where they located images and information, then screen the presentations before they are given in front of a group.
Evaluate Sources
The internet is certainly full of information, and some sources are superior to others. Make a list of sites for students to evaluate and have them use their critical thinking skills to evaluate the credibility of the information. They can be taught how to do this with a simple checklist of things to look for. This can be a great activity for them to learn that they can’t always take everything on the web at face value.
Multimedia Group Projects
Students love being able to work together when they can showcase their work in front of a group. Similar to presentations, multimedia projects will use students’ knowledge of a variety of technological applications and contain several components. There should be a written element, a visual element, and an audio element to the final product at the very least. These projects can involve a wide variety of skills and will truly engage students in the task at hand.
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This post was contributed by Holly McCarthy, who writes on the subject of the best online schools. She invites your feedback at hollymccarthy12 at gmail dot com
Tony Wagner, author of Global Achievement Gap, has an informative keynote speech about the Global Achievement Gap. He discusses 7
survival skills for thriving in the workforce and thriving:
Critical thinking
Collaboration and the ability to lead by influence through networks
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has identified financial literacy as a 21st Century Content area. We as adults need to be financially savvy and we need to impart that money sense to our students and children.
Tonight one of my girlfriends, Wendy Sterndale, told me about an awesome book offer that Suze Orman, financial guru, has to offer women that I hope you’ll accept or share with the women you care about. She has written a book called Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny.
Although geared towards women, I’m sure anyone can benefit from the financial wisdom. It’s a five month program to help you create a healthy relationship to money, make more out of the money you have for yourself and your loved ones, and gain more financial freedom. If you open a SaveYourself account with TD Ameritrade, they’ll add $100 to your account. So you can start easily investing and recoup your investment in her book too!
I’m on a major campaign to learn more about finances so that I can make fabulous choices around money and teach these tools and strategies to my students. I hope you join me in making financial literacy part of your life and your teaching.
Teacher Vicki Davis of coolcatblog created this excellent video about technology and the fear that people have around using it. It’s hosted on TeacherTube.com, a new educational alternative to YouTube.View this video file For more information on the reasons we need to teach technology in the schools, watch the presentation on 21st Century Skills.
What are the skills that a student and citizen of the Information Age needs to have?
The Partnership for the 21st Century has conducted a survey to identify the key skills needed for success in the 21st Century. Every student in your school or district should be:
1. a critical thinker
2. a problem solver
3. an innovator
4. an effective collaborator
5. a self-directed learner
6. information and media literate
7. globally aware
8. civically engaged
Ken Kay, President of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, explains in his presentation at the FETC Conference about why these skills are important. This hour presentation includes 8 strategies that your school and district will want to integrate into the curriculum to best prepare your students for the quickly changing terrain, as well as why these skills are critical to our students.
I’m going to share this presentation with my colleagues. It will provide an introduction to discussing what are the skills necessary for success in the 21st Century. I would love to get a school-wide consensus about what skills our students need to have and how to best support them in acquiring these lifelong skills. If you haven’t seen Did you know?, you will want to watch this dynamic and thought-provoking presentation by Karl Fisch. It’s only about 6 minutes long. It’ll give you the inspiration and motivation to listen to the hour-long presentation, if you need a bit of a boost.
Did you know? The rate of change on this planet is increasing at an exponential rate. The amount of information on the planet has doubled in the past few years and continues to increase at an amazing pace. We can only begin to imagine what the world will look like in 10 years. We live in exciting and wondrous times - and perhaps, it’s a bit unnerving.
Did you know? As educators, we have an important role in preparing our students for a world that is only just starting to take form. We live in the Information Age, a time of connection and expansion.
Did you know? China will soon be the largest English speaking country on the planet.
Did you know? Karl Fisch, Director of Technology at Arapahoe High School in Colorado, has created an amazing video presentation entitled Did You Know? It takes us on a brief journey into the future world of astounding facts that will make you think about where we need to be as educators and as a society. He has some additional presentations that you will also want to see. (Note:The music in Did You Know? is a mix of three tracks from The Last of the Mohicans.)
Did you know? Scott McLeod, Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota, has has an excellent blog, Dangerously Irrelevant. If you are interested in exploring the value and direction of education, you’ll appreciate what he has to contribute. He has also has links to Karl Fisch’s presentations.
For more information about the skills our students will need, read this post about 21st Century Skills.
Be in the know… it is the Information Age after all.
What is Squidoo? Squidoo is a website where people can create their own “lenses.” A lens is your perspective or favorite resources on a topic. For example, I created a lens on Fractions. It includes websites that have clear explanations of fractions, fun math games and practice, educational YouTube videos and books for further individual study. Squidoo lenses have great potential for teachers to aggregate helpful resources for students on a particular topic. I hope that this article inspires you to create your own and become a lensmaster.
You can build a site for free with the easy to use module-based templates. My first lens on integers took me about 3 hours to build. When I created it, I used my del.icio.us account to organize the different sites that I was interested in including. When I posted a site to my del.icio.us account, I tagged it with the lens topic. I’ve continued to add to it over the months and it’s now an excellent resource for both students and teachers. I’m delighted that it was included in the March National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) News Bulletin in the “Web Bytes” section.
There are a variety of modules that you can add to build your lens, including text/write, link list, amazon.com, poll, make a list, YouTube, Google maps and iTunes. The lens can be made more interactive by adding polls. I added a poll to my Ecological Footprint Education site about the size of people’s ecological footprint.
Most of the modules can be made more interactive with the “Plexo” feature. Plexo is a tool that allows your readers to rank or add to the data in your site. For example, on my Vedic math site readers can give feedback on which resources they found most valuable. The feedback automatically rearranges the sites from most to least popular. I’ve just started playing with Plexo modules this week. It feels like a nice way to help your readers sort through data and become an active learner. Plexo is also helpful because people can add other valuable resources to your site.
As the creator of the site, you can moderate how much interactivity you want. You can allow comments or not. You can also require that additions to your site be approved before they are published. So there is an element of quality control. As with most sites that allow rating, people must have a Squidoo account.
So what would you like to share with your students? What topic would you like to be a lensmaster on?
Del.icio.us is a website that allows you to bookmark sites. It’s called a social bookmark because, unlike bookmarks you add on your computer, you can access them from any computer. You can use social bookmarks to research information, collaborate or share sites with friends and family. The bookmarks are by default public information; however, you can change the settings so that others have no or limited access to what you mark.
Why Use Del.icio.us
Research on the Internet using social bookmarks is easy.
Bookmarked sites are accessible from any computer.
You can tag your bookmarks and organize them. You can use multiple tags for the same site. For example, I tag my Educating Millennials in the Information Age lens with millennials, information_age and squidoo.
Great sites can be shared with students or colleagues because social bookmarks are public.
You can “bundle” tags. For example, in my del.icio.us account I have a bundle called InformationAge and within it I have several related tags including wiki, blogs, squidoo and millennials.
Other people can benefit from your research. Instead of searching through an ever growing number of websites and blogs, I can search within del.icio.us and find what other people find valuable. Hence saving myself time.
You can share sites with other people using various features and tools. Del.icio.us has an easy to follow help section that explains the tools, such as networks, and includes why they are helpful.
You can also keep bookmarks private. You can still access your bookmarks from any computer, but others can have no or limited access to bookmarks.
5 Things to Know Before Using Social Bookmarks
Before you start to post things to del.icio.us, there are several things I highly recommend:
#1: Decide how you intend to use del.icio.us.
Are you intending to use social bookmarks for research or collaboration? Do you intend to share this information with others or is this for your own use?
Deciding whether you intend to have your bookmarks serve as a reference for others or mainly for personal use will impact how you structure your bookmarks.
#2: Choose your tags before you get started.
Before getting started put some thought into key tags that you would use. For me, the main things I was researching were math resources for students, Vedic math, Information Age and teaching technology.
#3:Think about some umbrella concepts that help you “bundle” your tags.
My bundles are EducationalVision, Math, InformationAge and Family. The last category being sites that members of my family created.
#4:Be mindful of the user name you choose.
When you bookmark sites and they are public, you are creating an on-line profile. You are identifying yourself with the information you mark as a favorite. Be thoughtful about the on-line profile you are creating and that this information is public. Even if you choose to use a name different from your actual name, note that the web is an amazing place and that information gets linked and connected. So be thoughtful of what you want identified with your user name, even if it isn’t your actual name.
#5: Allow for Private Savings.
Go to the “Settings” button on the top right and change to allow for private bookmarking. This will put a “do not share” button option on your page when you go to save a site.
The amazing thing about the Internet is not only how fast information can be dispersed, but also the profusion of information available. I’m learning new skills daily as I navigate in the Information Age. When I’m looking for information on a topic I follow this basic template: gather, sift, sort & synthesize. Although the basic idea of moving through information may be the same as during the Industrial Revolution, there are new tools and considerations for this new age.
Gather
When searching for information on-line use search words intelligently. For example, if I want to learn about enlightened teaching, I might start with enlightened teaching. If that doesn’t yield results, I would do similar words like compassionate teaching or education compassion.
Add or delete words from your query depending on what type of, or how much, information is retrieved. I could be more specific and look for teaching compassion strategies.
Sometimes you want specific information. Putting words in quotes will find only results where those words come together. For example waldorf education and “waldorf education” will not produce the same results. Waldorf education (without quotes) could look like “waldorf salad made in a consumer education class”. Whereas “waldorf education” will definitely be about waldorf schools.
Gathering also requires a way to store information so you can sift through it. A wonderful tool to do this is a free website called del.icio.us. When you use a web-based service like del.icio.us to publicly share resources, it’s called “social bookmarking.” It’s like your own on-line, public library. Anyone can see what you’ve posted. Create a del.icio.us account and post sites that you like to your del.icio.us account, which leads to the next task of sifting.
Sift Learning how to sift through information and to determine the bias and reliability of sources is a valuable critical thinking skill.
As you visit different sites, it’s important to know who is the source or author.
Identifying reliable sources are skills we regularly utilize and teach are kids. On the Internet it becomes an even more crucial skill due to the plethora of inaccurate information being disseminated.
Ask yourself what are the source’s biases.
Have discussions with your students around reliability and bias as a means of sifting through information. Why not have an activity where you pose a question and list several sites. Have the kids determine if there is a bias or if the source is reliable.
Sort Use your deli.cio.us account to sort through material by using the tag feature. Tags are keywords associated with the information. Type in meaningful tags that will help you sort the information. For example, I found a PowerPoint presentation on educating Millennials. I tagged it as “education millennials powerpoint technology.”
My sister Jessie Newburn taught me about the tag “someday maybe,” which she read in David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. The “someday maybe” tag means she doesn’t want to investigate it now, but it may be of value someday, maybe. Periodically, she goes through it and deletes or acts on the “someday maybe” posts.
Synthesize
This is where life gets more interesting. As educators who use Bloom’s taxonomy, it’s always exciting when we can get kids to synthesize the material.
What new meaning can you create from the material?
What new insights do you have when you see the spectrum of information?
My Squidoo lenses on Educating Millennials and Integers are examples of ways that I went through the gather, sift, sort and synthesize model. The creation of the lenses was the synthesis of all the research and how I connected the dots. Very fun indeed!
